


what's hope with no savior

by teenagewaste



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Theo Raeken, Theo Raeken-centric, Theo loves Liam so much, excessive amounts of religious symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 11:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20488091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenagewaste/pseuds/teenagewaste
Summary: If even the devil was once an angel, how vile did it make Theo, who never had the right to experience heaven?





	what's hope with no savior

Lucifer was an angel once, cast down from heaven for refusing to bow down to the creation of man, for distancing himself from his God. A fallen angel; punished for being the first to act upon his own free will against the name of his savior. This drew him to rebel, to be overcome by temptation and sin, until he became its very definition. 

Theo had never been an angel. He had never fallen from grace, had never seen the light only to be pushed out of it; he walked down every dark path that the underworld set up for him. From the very source of his memories, he can only remember being a monster. If even the devil was once an angel, how vile did it make him, who never had the right to experience heaven?

There must be black in his soul, his insides made out of hatred and evil. His entire existence, all he knew was hell—the figurative and the literal. His entire life was wrong decisions until he became the wrong decision, and his afterlife was spent reliving the worst thing he had ever done. Theo was a ghost with a beating heart, the grim reaper walking among the living. His hands were more blood than flesh—he could still smell it, _taste _it, on him. It was something that couldn’t be washed away, a sin that could never be absolved.

The blood that pumped through his veins felt like poison, acid burning its way through his body, and he wondered if that was a punishment from Tara. She can’t rip his heart out endlessly anymore, so maybe this was the next best thing (and it was okay, god, as long as she didn’t hurt _him). _

Him, who had saved Theo from her unrelenting torture (although she had every right to take back what belonged to her—he _deserved _it for everything he had done). Liam, who took him out of her grasp and gave him a second chance at life because he believed that Theo could help him. He broke open the ground, raising Theo from the depths of hell, and had trusted Theo to help him. Neither one of them had realized it, but Liam had trusted him from the very beginning, albeit reluctantly, no matter how often Liam insisted he didn’t trust Theo. And something about it made Theo’s chest ache in a way that he couldn’t explain, in a way that it hadn’t ever felt before. It was overwhelming, all consuming; he was _touched. _It may have taken him weeks to figure it out, but Theo had been overwhelmed by the simple idea that Liam trusted him, and he loathed it. He loathed every part of it.

How _dare _his body, his mind, his _heart, _betray him like that? How dare they make him into a creature of caring and emotions, something he had never had the right to experience in the first place? Theo was barely human—a monster, a failed science experiment. Experiments aren’t supposed to feel; they each have a purpose for creation, and his was to destroy. How can you destroy if you feel anything? 

If you don’t feel, you can’t feel guilty about destroying, and you sure as hell can’t regret it. 

But here Theo was, fresh out of the ground with feelings running rampant through his chest. The emotions constantly running through his bloodstream, tearing him apart from the inside, were more painful than anything the dread doctors ever could have done to him. There was no compartmentalizing this, once one emotion was felt they all came crashing down on him like a tidal wave, never giving him the chance to come up for air. He had spent years of his life learning how to repress all emotion, how to feel numb, and he enjoyed it. He enjoyed feeling nothing because it gave him power, _control. _

Sometimes Theo wondered if he was ever after real power, or if he was just after some semblance of control in his life that had gone downhill since he let three monsters convince him that his sisters heart belonged to him instead. He remembers being thirsty for power, he remembers enjoying the way it felt to tear things apart and watch them crumble to bits, he remembers destroying a whole pack and getting a sick satisfaction at seeing them fall to ruins. But it all feels like it was a lifetime ago, and in some way, it had been. There was the Theo from before, and then the Theo from _after _(because once you experience the pain that you caused the one person who loved you, you tend to start thinking back on all of your life choices). 

Although he was a monster designed to kill, he had never particularly enjoyed killing. It was a means to an end for him, something that was done once it needed to be done, not something he actively sought after just to do. He used to think that he enjoyed the feeling of blood sticking to his fingers, the way he felt high on endorphins produced by the imagined power and control, but it may have just been that. Control.

Power and control are sometimes synonymous, at least to Theo. When you hold the power, you hold the control. When you have control, you have power. They’re one in the same to him, and although Liam will tell him that he’s wrong, only one emotion can be felt at a time. It was so much easier to fight for the power to feel like he had the control of the life he handed over to the dread doctors on a silver platter.

The desire to ruin, to destroy, to _control, _dissipated slowly, though Theo wasn’t sure when. It was shocked out of him, the desire to live outweighing the desire to do anything else—yet, it became more than that. He spent time around Liam, and it was when he realized that he was starting to _feel _things; things that he couldn’t identify or put a name on.

It was uncontrollable—almost _obsessive—_the way that Theo had taken a liking to following Liam in the shadows, watching him and protecting him silently. Theo was just thankful that Liam wasn’t good with heartbeats and chemosignals yet, or else he would have been caught by now. His feet guided him blindly to Liam’s lacrosse practices and games, to the school in the middle of the day, to Liam or Mason’s houses in the evening—almost as if he had no control over what his body was doing.

This sick fascination with Liam made his blood boil—what, did he feel like he _owed _Liam? He didn’t owe him a damn thing; he didn’t ask Liam to take him out of the ground, he had done that on his own volition, though no matter how many times he repeated that to himself, his feet still carried him to Liam. After weeks of the subconscious protecting, Theo realized that he actually _cared _about Liam. It was a reluctant, exhausting sort of caring, one that he would have rather not been a part of, but he cared nonetheless. 

It blossomed from a reluctant, exhausting feeling of care, to a pure devotion, a _worship. _It was an obsessive, compulsive worship that rewired everything inside of Theo to _Liam. _He could pick the boys heartbeat out of a crowd, could follow his scent from memory. And from that obsession, came more feelings that he didn’t particularly understand—but he wanted to be _good_, if only for Liam’s sake. And if that meant opening his mind up to the concept of feeling, he would suffer through it.

If only for Liam.

* * *

In the pursuit of being good, he had taken a liking to torturing himself—the ability to feel being his ultimate weapon against his own mind. Sometimes, Theo would go back to that bridge, the one where he let his sister die in front of him. He was so out of touch from himself that he could barely remember what it felt like; he knows that if the same thing were to happen today, he wouldn’t be able to watch her die. Coming to the bridge was much different now than it had been that night Liam and Stiles followed him out here; there was no forced stoicism, no false mourning—there was only bone crushing guilt and remorse.

Theo would stand there and stare out at the water until the emotions became too much, and he couldn’t breathe, as if someone was tearing out his lungs (maybe it was Tara, maybe he had never left hell and this was all a cruel illusion). He would stand there until he collapsed in on himself, choking back tears and gasps for air as panic took over his body, and each time he thought that it would be such divine justice if he died here, where she fell from grace, tortured by the thought of what he had done. He did it because he knew he deserved it, because he knew he had guilt and remorse to catch up on. Theo didn’t think that anything could make up for what he had done. Maybe he would have welcomed death with open arms after he started feeling, if he hadn’t felt the constant urge—the constant _need_—to protect Liam.

Liam had broken open the underground prison; Theo coming face to face with his savior, his salvation—the one deity that Theo would ever believe in. Theo had never been an angel, no, but Liam had. A beautiful ocean-eyed boy with a heart made of gold; a selfless creature restricted by anger and fear. The thought of Liam made something inside of Theo’s chest flare up; something uncomfortable and all-consuming taking control of his body—Theo had never felt so weak before.

* * *

Thinking back, it was ironic that it was the ghost riders that made him remember that the pull he felt towards Liam was almost instantaneous. From the time that he was so intent on protecting Stiles—something that at the time, Theo barely understood—Theo had felt a small tug somewhere deep inside of the soul he wasn’t sure he really had. He remembered the way he viewed Liam as a complication, a nuisance, something that made him so angry that he wanted to bash the boy’s skull in and forget how god damned _blue _his eyes were. Despite that, he had never wanted to genuinely hurt Liam, he never wanted him to suffer, but he was essential in Theo’s plans, so he shoved it deep down and hoped that it would never come back.

And when Liam was the first person he saw when he clawed his way out of the ground, the first thing he _smelled_, he almost lost his mind at the way his heart clenched looking at the boy. But having never experienced emotions the way most people had, he convinced himself that it was purely gratitude for Liam releasing him from Tara’s grasp. 

God, he was such a fucking moron.

They were trapped in the hospital with every ghost rider in the hunt, and Liam was so willing to be forgotten to give Scott an opportunity to fix everything. He had complete faith that Scott would be able to save everyone, and it confused Theo to no end. What kind of person has such blind trust in someone?

It was watching him fight, the way that he saved Theo despite saying moments before that he would leave him for bait, that shocked Theo into remembering the way he was drawn to the beta from the very start. He realized that he would do anything to make sure that he never forgot Liam, that he would lay down his life if it meant that Liam could be safe and continue to survive. 

The realization is what made him throw Liam into the elevator and potentially sacrifice himself with the small shred of hope that Liam would get out of this safely.

Theo successfully protected Liam, yet somehow also protected himself. Perhaps it was the idea that he would never see his stupid smile or his ridiculously blue eyes, or that he would never even argue with the beta that made him stronger, more able to fight. When he saw Liam again, being choked by a ghost rider and struggling to loosen its hold, the urge to protect overwhelmed Theo, clawing directly into the ghost rider’s back.

Seeing Liam out in the open like that—alone, defenseless—made something inside of Theo snap. He didn’t want to show care, or worry, but he couldn’t help it at that point; Liam infuriated him to the point of explosion.

“So, what’s the plan?” Theo grunted. If only he still had a shred of self-preservation, he would have run as fast as he could away from this town after fighting off a hospital of ghost riders, but _no_, he just _had _to stick around for Liam.

“Steal a horse…ride into the hunt,” Liam said it with such certainty, yet it still sounded almost like a question.

“You’re _kidding _right?” It was laughable that this kid hadn’t gotten himself killed already—and now he wants to run directly into the danger. The striking fear inside of him made him snap at Liam, made him lose control of his tongue. He turned to look at Liam, “I went through all this to _keep you _from getting taken.”

Liam ignored him, whether it was because he didn’t understand that it was a monumental fuck up for Theo to say anything remotely meaningful to him, or he didn’t understand that it was meaningful at all. Instead, he pulled a face with a slight grimace, “You need a hand?”

“I’m good,” Theo struggled with the ghost rider—arms wrapped around its neck as. It struggled to get free. He smashed its body against the railing, pulling it further away from where Liam needed to go. “Go already!”

It made Theo’s blood boil, the way he was so willing to save everyone but himself. Theo didn’t fight him on it, though, knowing that it would just waste time and do no good anyway. He quickly knocked the ghost rider out with a few punches and a kick just for good measure, needing visual confirmation that Liam was safe—as safe as he _could _be right now. Liam was sat unsurely on a horse, face slightly panicked as it he tried to turn the animal around. Everything in Theo ached to go with him, to protect him, but he knew that it wasn’t time yet; Liam wasn’t ready for Theo’s protection.

“You know how to ride a horse?”

“Not really!”

Theo couldn’t help the small, exasperated smile as he watched Liam ride off on a horse he didn’t know how to ride, all with the intent of saving his friends—saving everyone.

He truly was Scott McCall’s beta, no doubt about it.

In the pursuit of being a good person, someone worthy enough to be around Liam, Theo sought out to find Scott and help in whatever way he could—which meant the first real fight where he couldn’t kill; where he didn’t _want _to kill. Theo didn’t think he could ever mindlessly kill again. He wasn’t sure what it was, why the thought of killing made him feel nauseous; made him feel _guilty._

When he thought back on the people he killed, only a few made him feel guilt. Josh, Tracy, all of the experiments he killed for the doctors as some sort of sick training; it was hard to feel remorse over them when he thought that he had been doing them a favor. Slowly, though, he was learning to feel the tidal waves drowning him.

Guilt really was a bitch.

* * *

Weeks went by—weeks of sleeping in his truck, getting woken up every night by deputies that cared more about trespassing than they did about a teenage boy sleeping in the backseat of his car. Which, was quite frankly ridiculous, but Theo never had much faith in humanity to begin with, so he didn’t really expect anything else. Weeks of parking in the very back of the schools parking lot just to hear Liam’s heartbeat when he arrived or when he left, weeks of standing hidden in the woods next to the lacrosse field to make sure that the angry little shit didn’t get himself into any more trouble than necessary. Weeks of emotion after emotion flooding his body, leaving him crippled and confused and _angry_.

The caring is what made him stay in Beacon Hills in the first place—Theo easily could have skipped town, conned his way into a place to stay and charmed himself into an off-the-books job, but he couldn’t leave Liam alone, especially with Scott leaving town. And that caring is what got him hooked up to an electric chain-link fence by some psychopathic orderly from Eichen, with two other morons that he didn’t even _know._

The sick part of it? The whole time he was there, he was concerned with dying because he meant he was leaving Liam defenseless. 

Caring about Liam was going to get him killed.

* * *

Maybe Theo had to kill, just one last time. It wasn’t for _fun,_and he didn’t go out of his way to do it, but when someone straps you up to a fence and electrocutes you for hours, one might get slightly homicidal; or, in Theo’s case, severely homicidal. Hooking that guy up and leaving him to fry was more—pest control, than anything else. Theo could justify it in whatever way he’d like, but there was still a nagging feeling inside of him. He didn’t feel guilty, but he _was _worried about how Liam would react if he ever found out. Liam still didn’t entirely trust him, but he must have believed that Theo was a bit better than he used to be—would killing one man make Liam look at him like everything he touched turned to sin? 

Theo had resigned himself, however, to the realization that he’d probably never see Liam—outside of following him—again, but by some strange twist of fate, he did—the catch was that it was in the middle of a war, in a police station that they were barricaded in, where Theo was just getting out of lock up. Theo just wanted to stay alive, he didn’t want to get involved in this war, but once he saw Liam, he knew he was fucked.

“Does somebody want me to kill him?” Theo nearly laughed at the way his heartbeat stuttered with the lie. Liam may not have liked him, but he definitely didn’t want to kill him. When Malia turned on him and snapped, Theo could see the way he looked at Malia, concerned, but the way that his eyes lingered on Theo for a second too long with the same emotion in his eyes. 

Theo didn’t even _mean _to start a fight this time, it just seemed to happen every time he talked to Liam. He lost control of himself, and to get it back, he lashed out. It still seemed better than being honest with him. Liam was getting out of hand; snapping about how Nolan was sick in the head, he looked like he was going to blow up on everyone, so Theo dragged him off so they could talk alone; trying to convince him that the two morons weren’t worth dying over. He _knew _why Liam was so intent on saving them, aside from the obvious. They were the last of the pack that his friends were a part of. Theo just wanted to stay alive, but more importantly, he needed Liam to stay alive, and he wasn’t letting Liam’s survivors guilt stop him from saving their asses.

Theo was dangerously close to almost saying something _caring_, so instead, he snapped, “Your dead friends are dead, and they’re gonna _stay dead, _no matter what you do—_”_

When Liam punched him right in the face without hesitation, it was like something Theo had never felt before. Whether Liam realized it or not, hitting Theo like that was a show of faith; _trust. _Liam did it without any fear that Theo would snap and break his neck, or plot his ultimate demise, and something about it gave Theo a sick satisfaction—he wanted Liam to do it _again._

There was a certain way that Theo was in tune to Liam—a way where he automatically reacted to anything Liam felt. When they shot that arrow through the window with Brett’s bloody jersey number on it, Theo’s eyes snapped to Liam, and as his anger got the best of him, Theo’s spine snapped straight, stepping into the room to gauge Liam’s reactions. 

_Fuck,_Theo would personally sink his claws into that Monroe bitch’s neck and rip her throat out for the way that she made Liam reek of a sick mixture of grief and anger and guilt. Theo wasn’t sure how Malia could stand so close to Liam and be unaffected by the smell, when Theo was standing several feet away and felt like he needed some fresh air. He needed time to clear his head of murderous thoughts, because seeing Liam like this? It made Theo’s stomach clench, his heart constrict.

Their plans usually work, although they always come with some sort of price. The two morons from Satomi’s pack got to go to federal lockup, and the rest of them had to leave town. Still, Theo spared a glance at Liam when the two morons got into the van with Scott’s dad, just to see the relieved look in his eyes.

* * *

Somehow, the pack started treating him as if he belonged—sort of. They clearly didn’t like him, they clearly still didn’t trust him, with good reason, he supposed. Breaking apart long lasting friendships, trying to kill everyone—even _actually _killing one of them—probably gave them a decent reason to think he was scheming again. But, they didn’t know how deep his dedication to Liam was. They didn’t know the way his entire being was in tune to Liam, or the way it was his instinct reaction to abandon all self-preservation to protect him; how could they? He wouldn’t let them know—he wouldn’t even let Liam know. 

All Theo really wanted was to keep him safe; he didn’t care about a pack, he didn’t care about power or control—he was living on borrowed time, time that Liam gave him, and he would spend all of it making sure Liam never ran out of time.

It started at the zoo, with Nolan. Theo _knew_what Nolan did to Liam; he was surprised that he hadn’t tried to kill Nolan himself, but he also knew that killing him wouldn’t sit so well with Liam, and he was trying to get Liam to like him. The beta asked him for help, for backup, and it was almost as if Theo was listing off all of the times that Liam has subconsciously trusted him. The plan wasn’t going as well as Liam hoped, though, and before they had even failed, Theo could smell the defeat coming off of Liam, could hear it in his voice. The beta really needed to learn to control his scent, because the emotions were suffocating. Theo, while selfish with a want to succeed, also couldn’t stand failing a plan that Liam had come up with.

“Isn’t that right?” Theo shouted as loud as he could, Liam turning back to him with shock written all over his face. “You got a problem? Oh! That’s right, you _always _have a problem!”

“What the hell are you doing?” Liam whispered, eyebrows furrowed. 

“Shut up!” Theo yelled in his face, watching Liam’s head jerk back as he stared at Theo like he had lost his mind.

Theo hit him, right in the center of the face, both of the boys scrambling to stand. “See that, Scott? Little beta can’t even take a punch!”

“Okay, I _get it,_” Liam sounded exasperated. “But did you really have to punch me?” So, Theo hit him again. Theo wanted him to _fight back. _Sure, he was getting a bit angrier and starting to push Theo around, but Theo wanted him to really _fight._

“See what I mean, Scott?” Theo ran his fingers through his hair. “He’s only good in a fight when he’s angry; so, let’s see just how angry he gets.” Liam growled, ready to come after him, but Theo wanted him more riled up, punching him for a second time. Theo watched the blood drip down from Liam’s nose with a smirk, before Liam pounced on him, his fist connecting with Theo’s nose hard enough to break it. Theo landed in a few good punches, the two boys shoving each other around—onto the ground, against the rocks. Liam managed to break his nose for a second time—immediately after it healed the first time. Theo got in one good claw to Liam’s stomach and then pulled back, realizing he had probably gone too far with that one, and in no way wanted to hurt the beta like that. 

“Are you done? Or should we keep going?”

“I think they’re sold,” Theo could have laughed; there was absolutely no reason for them to have a small brawl to sell their plan. 

“You ripped my t-shit,” Liam said, not sounding angry at all about the claw marks on his abdomen, just the ones in his shirt.

“Yeah,” Theo leaned back against the rock with an eyeroll. “You broke my nose. Twice. It healed, you broke it again. Two times!” Liam stared at him for a moment before his shoulders twitched in what could have been a shrug, and then there was a fist flying at Theo’s face before he could even blink.

“Three times!”

Liam could break Theo’s nose, and Theo would smile right through it. 

See, he _loved _fighting with Liam, it was like a sense of normalcy to him; harsh words, rude comments, and more recently, punches in the face. Theo _reveled _in it, the dance they did was a drug of the worst kind, the kind he wanted to inject straight into his bloodstream, get high off of the adrenaline and endorphins like a junkie. He couldn’t buy it in a little bag on a street corner, though, and that’s what turned him into such a fiend. He’d bitch and complain just to get Liam to do it again.

He was like a child with a fucking crush, picking on Liam like they’re on a playground during recess to show him that Theo liked him. It was almost pathetic. 

What was even _more _pathetic was that Theo was so god damned whipped that watching Liam rant about history was endearing; although he had come up with a solid enough plan—if the place Liam picked wasn’t something that set him off, his anger clearly starting to overpower him. Theo played it off like he didn’t care, as if he was really going to leave Liam there alone with hunters; as if he was going to leave Liam there alone with _himself_.

He’d followed Liam, physically having to drag him out of Nolan’s sight, when Liam’s eyes went gold. Sure, Liam had trouble controlling his anger, but he was unprovoked; Theo tugging on his arm wouldn’t have usually made him wolf out. It was Theo’s fault, really, that Nolan found them; he was the one arguing with Liam out in the open, but something about Liam being so angry—so _scared_—put Theo on edge.

When Nolan came around that corner, Liam’s self-control withered away to nothing, and Theo watched as Liam tackled the human over the edge of the rocks and down another level. Theo found his way down to them, and watched as Nolan held a crossbow up, level with Liam’s sternum, and babbled about how Monroe wanted her to kill Liam, and that he would be dead if he didn’t. Maybe, Theo should have felt bad, but this was _Liam. _Theo would do anything to protect Liam, whether it be killing the moronic teen hunter in front of him, or saving Liam from doing it himself.

Theo had never seen someone have so much control when they were so _out_of control, but Liam had smashed his fist on a brick wall to fight his instinct to kill. He’d broken every knuckle, every finger, every bone in his hand, just to save Nolan. Theo knew that the only way to save everyone in that situation was to take Liam out of the equation, so he knocked him out with a small warning to Nolan, and carried Liam off to his truck. The boy just wouldn’t stay down, though, and Theo had to stop four separate times _just _to punch Liam a bit.

When Liam came to, Theo tried as hard as he possibly could to keep the smile off of his face, but he just couldn’t _help _it; seeing Liam slightly groggy and pouting, his scent laced with mild amusement underneath irritation when Theo told him that he had to knock him out five times.

Liam let himself be amused for a few seconds before he sighed, “I almost killed him, didn’t I?” 

Yes, Liam had almost beat Nolan unrecognizable—not that the little fuck didn’t _deserve _it—but it was still an almost; and Liam needed to see it that way, too. “Almost,” Theo replied, his voice a strange tone that he had never used before. It was—soft, in a way. “But, you broke your hands trying not to.”

“Guess that’s something,” Liam mumbled. A nauseatingly strong scent of guilt and shame took over the car, and all Theo wanted to do was roll the windows down so he didn’t have to _smell _how bad Liam felt. Or, maybe he wanted to give the other boy a hug; he assumed that that’s what a normal person would do under the circumstances.

Liam had never explicitly told Theo about his IED, but Theo had spent enough time watching Liam to know about it. Since it was a part of Liam, Theo did his best to understand everything about it. He knew that the rage and violence were almost entirely uncontrollable, and that the episodes were typically followed with intense guilt. But Theo wasn’t like everyone else, he didn’t know how to handle this or how to react to it, he didn’t know how to make anything better. 

“You wanted me to help,” Theo put it out into the void, as if saying it would have made Liam confirmed it—even though he already knew it was true.

“If I needed your help for anything, it would be so I’d get angry enough to kill you myself,” Theo ignored him, the blatant lie was an insult to Theo’s intelligence. Liam could never kill anyone, even Theo. 

When Theo told him that you could only feel one emotion at a time, Liam looked at him with a crease in between his eyes, and then a small smile graced his face, something softly amused. 

He looked at Theo as if he were saying, _I know something you don’t know._

* * *

Maybe Theo was thinking too much into it, but it seemed that every decision Liam made was another gesture of trust that he didn’t realize. He _trusted _Theo to protect Mason, his best friend, as they searched underground tunnels. It made his chest warm in a way he couldn’t explain, and he silently swore that he would keep Mason safe at all costs; if only for Liam. 

Theo lost his right to swear to a God a long time ago—maybe that’s why everything always fell to bits. He tried his damn hardest to protect Mason, and he didn’t do all that bad; he could have gotten the kid _killed. _Still, seeing the human get hurt because Theo couldn’t protect him well enough, in severe pain because Theo didn’t have a soul with the capacity to help like that, even when he wanted to. Hearing Mason tell him _you can’t take pain if you don’t care _stirred something nostalgically painful in his gut. 

_Failure._

It sent Theo into an inward spiral—if Liam was ever in danger, would Theo be able to take his pain? How was Theo supposed to protect him if he can’t do everything possible to keep him safe? It was something that came _natural _to everyone else, something that they were able to do instinctually. It seemed that everyone was just born with more _good _in their hearts than Theo—whose sole purpose in life was to set fire to everything around him. 

Though, it seemed as if he smothered the flames inside of Liam.

* * *

Yes, Theo was tailing Liam. It wasn’t anything _new, _Theo supposes, but it was definitely more obvious than it typically was. They were supposed to be laying low, but instead, Liam took a field trip to the high school—Theo, a loyal disciple, following. He stayed a decent length back; close enough to still smell him, but far enough that Liam wouldn’t notice he was there. Theo counted to sixty before he walked into the same room Liam had—coming to face Liam holding that kid Gabe’s head up against a mirror so hard that the glass was cracking, blood from the human’s head dripping down into the sink below. 

Theo stood back with his arms crossed for a few more seconds, trying to figure out the best way to diffuse the situation. 

“You really going to kill him?” Theo asked. Liam spun around in surprise at the sound of the chimera’s voice, but remained where he was. “I mean, I don’t care if you do, but, have you thought this through?” Liam’s scent shifted as his focus wavered—he was more listening to Theo than he was acting on impulse.

“Have you thought this through?” Theo continued when Liam didn’t respond, watching for any minute changes in Liam’s demeanor. “Any idea where you’re gonna dump the body? No one saw you grab him, did they? Because that could be a problem.” Theo almost wanted to laugh at the smell of fear coming off of Gabe—_good, _it’s what he deserves for hurting Liam. Liam, however, would never forgive himself for committing the sin that Theo knows like breathing, so it was his job to make sure Liam stayed pure. 

“_I don’t care,” _Liam snarled, holding Gabe’s head against the mirror tighter. _Turn his focus away from the anger._

“I don’t care either, at least let me help; I’m the one with experience here,” Theo would help Liam murder, dismember, bury, burn—_hide, run. _Theo would help Liam do anything, but he wouldn’t help him destroy himself. “You’ve got to find the witnesses, and kill them too. Which means we’re gonna need shovels; some plastic bags, a chainsaw.” It seemed to _finally _hit Liam, because he stepped back and let Gabe fall to the floor. Theo let out a breath that he hadn’t known he was holding; glad that he was able to talk Liam down.

Like the night at the zoo, Liam looked at his reflection in the broken, bloodstained mirror, and his scent went sour with guilt and shame. The smell made Theo’s—_Tara’s—_heart clench, his mind frantically searching for something to say to make Liam feel better. “You didn’t kill him, that’s progress,”

“Why do you keep trying to save me?” Liam demanded. “You think it’ll make Scott forget about everything you did? Just let you into the pack? Scott’s never going to trust you.”

Liam was blind—he was blind, deaf, and an absolute _moron _if he didn’t understand it by now, if he didn’t get that Theo did all of this _for him._He didn’t want to be in the pack, he didn’t want praise, he didn’t want anything in return, but it was almost insulting that Liam thought that Theo would’ve done this for any reason other than his devotion to Liam; his archangel, the carrier of souls to heaven.

* * *

His devotion to Liam turned into something that set a fire in his sister’s heart, something that burned its way through his body. Something that made him lose control of himself; it turned into talking Liam down from the edge, preventing him from making a mistake that he wouldn’t be able to live with once he calmed down, and since when did Theo give a fuck about good decisions?

It became running back to a hospital filled with hunters to be sure that the boy wouldn’t die, when he should have been well past the city lines. It dissolved all of his self-preservation instincts. He ran into a hospital where he knew there would be guns pointed at him, and went _directly where the guns were _to save Liam. He pulled him into the elevator, and looked right down at Liam, “I’m not dying for you.”

Theo could hear his own heartbeat stutter; if Liam heard it, he didn’t say anything. 

“I’m not dying for you either,” Liam replied, his heart jumping the same way that Theo’s had, staring at him until Theo could feel his own eyes drift down to Liam’s lips on their own accord. Theo couldn’t hear much over his own heartbeat pounding, his mouth going dry with the realization that _this could be it, and this could be the last time he’d ever see Liam again._

_Fuck._

It hit him, standing in the elevator probably about to die, that he was _in love_with Liam. Theo wanted to laugh, he wanted to scream, he wanted Tara to stop _fucking around _with the heart he stole from her. This was all some cruel joke to her, having him love someone that he could never be graced with. Theo came from the darkness, he was the example of how the underworld ruled you over with temptation, and Liam was the light; he was the air that Theo breathed and _this _must be how Lucifer felt when he was cast out of heaven. So out of reach of his God, his deity, and he would never be graced with his light again. 

Theo barely remembers anything from that moment until he shoved Liam to the ground in front of him, getting shot once in the shoulder, Liam shot once in the leg. It was like fighting with Liam was muscle memory at that point, and while it was fascinating, it bothered him that they did so much fighting that it came naturally for them. 

“It hurts,” The whole room went silent as Gabe dragged his bloody, bullet-ridden body up against the wall. The smell of the blood was making Theo’s head spin, but something in his chest wasn’t sitting right; watching this _child _cry about how much pain he’s in. He looks so much younger now than he did five minutes ago, holding an assault rifle at Liam.

Theo’s feet led him towards the boy on their own, he hadn’t even realized he was moving at first. Something in his chest ached for the human; but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. He had _hurt Liam, _Theo had wanted him dead, or at least maimed, but this—this was different. He stared down at Gabe, and he saw himself. He saw himself as a child doing unspeakable things because he was led down the darkest path in life, could see himself in the way the people that were supposed to take care of this boy abandoned him, _killed him_, left him to die alone.

Theo didn’t want to leave him to die alone.

Before he knew what he was doing, Theo bent down, wrapped both hands gently around Gabe’s forearm, and watched the black tendrils of pain flow from him into Theo. It seemed almost like a fever dream at first, because this was something Theo was never supposed to be able to do; he didn’t have the right to be a good person, not after everything he’d already done.

When Gabe’s heartbeat finally slowed to a stop, Theo gently rested the boy’s arm back down, standing up and staring down at him for a moment. Staring at Gabe gave Theo a strange sense of déjà vu; hearing him cry out in pain took Theo back to the tunnels—to Tara dragging him below the surface while he begged for help. They were both just scared kids.

It was a blur after Gabe died; Melissa removed the bullets from Liam and Theo and then shooed the two boys along with Mason and Corey out of the hospital to go get some rest. Scott had texted them to let them know that they would meet up tomorrow, and to finally get some sleep. Theo walked to his truck silently, his brain trying to wrap around the fact that he had actually _taken someone’s pain. _He was so deep in thought that he didn’t even hear the second heartbeat until they slammed the door to his truck shut.

Theo looked up and came face to face with Liam, a small smile on his face. “Okay if we go get food?”

Theo furrowed his eyebrows, but didn’t argue, just turned on the ignition and went to a diner that he knew Liam liked—Liam didn’t comment on how Theo knew in the first place.

* * *

Loving Liam made Theo want to be pure; it made him want for something—_someone_—more than just himself. Theo was a killer; the blood on his hands washed off but the smell still remained, the feeling never fading. If religion were real—if praying to a God that he didn’t believe in would do him any good—Theo could drown himself in Our Father’s and Hail Mary’s; could tie a rosary around his neck like a noose—it would still never rid his soul of blood. No matter how many prayers could spill from his lips and his tongue, it would never push the sin out of his veins.

He wasn’t sure when Liam started looking at him like he was worth something, or when Liam had started looking at him in a way that made him feel _clean. _Liam—Theo’s deity, his salvation. He could feel Liam washing the blood from his hands, could feel him absolving Theo of sin—looking at him like he was worth more than the eternal damnation that Theo laid down for himself. It was so _easy _for Liam, for his _angel_, to carry Theo’s soul back to the light. Theo didn’t deserve to stand in the light; to stand in the presence of his grace, his savior—he was a careless tourist in the light of the divine. 

Sitting outside of Liam’s house, Theo looked over at Liam, finding bright blue eyes staring back at him in the darkness. Theo felt raw; exposed—like he had just stepped out of a church confessional. He couldn’t stop his tongue from moving when he whispered, “I love you.”

A small smile graced Liam’s face as he took Theo’s hand gently, as if he had no fear of Theo’s touch staining him black. 

“I know,” Liam whispered back, equally as quiet. “I love you.”

Liam leaned in slowly, waiting for the older boy to startle, but moved forward and pressed his lips to Theo’s when there was no sign of hesitation. Theo was shocked still, lightening striking to his core, until his mind softened; lips pushing back against Liam’s with a sigh.

Angels sung a chorus around them.

**Author's Note:**

> as i was writing this, i kept putting in pieces that didn't fit, so now i have four other drafts that will eventually become fics, so. there's that! i'm actually kind of ridiculously proud of this; i like the idea of religious imagery with characters who don't believe in religion, there's just something about it, who knows. 
> 
> the title is from medusa by kailee morgue


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